I'm off Facebook.

Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Again.

It kind of makes me feel a little fickle....that doesn't seem like quite the right word, but you know, someone who just can't stick to their guns. Flip flops. Can't make up their mind and knuckle down. It's only the second time I've done it though, that can't be too bad. I'm sure there are lots of people who have gone back and forth many times. There has to be---one of the click boxes FB provides when it asks you as you are deactivating, why you are doing it is, This is just temporary. I'll be back.

I clicked 'other'. I wrote in the box It's so shallow.

It was about 4 years ago I think that I got off FB for the first time and I had some specific and pretty much completely different reasons for that which I won't go into here and now. This time however...I'm just tired of the shallowness. Now, for anyone reading this now who is still on FB, please don't take offense. As I heard recently, and quote with satisfaction: "this is descriptive of my life, not prescriptive for anyone elses".

I'm just tired of seeing status update after update about trivial things that people are doing. But it's not even that so much, it's the lack of interaction--true, real interaction. People just making flip, sarcastic comments, trying so hard to be the funniest, the cleverest, the cutest. I was falling into it myself.
And then the politics. People accepting friend requests who don't even know each other, people cutting others out of their friend lists without even as much as a 'hey there'. I'm just tired of it all. You send messages to people that they don't respond to...as a real friend of mine said recently on FB, she wonders why it's become acceptable to ignore invitations or stand people up. I learned the hard and disappointing way that FB allows you to reach this huge group of people...only to have 75% of them ignore your plea. That hurts. And we shouldn't be doing that to each other.

So now I've deactivated and I've got a page up that will show me how to actually delete (cuz you know when you deactivate, you're still actually there...what makes it different from logging out is beyond me). My husband wondered why I just didn't stop going to it....because I'm weak I suppose. I keep thinking of things that I'll miss and regret about doing it...a few friends who I enjoyed seeing their posts, the PRS group I started and now has over 700 members actively talking and sharing their experiences and problems. My business page is a sticky problem that I'm working on and should be able to get around...I hope. But even if I don't fix it...is it really going to make that huge of a difference if my business doesn't have a FB page? I suspect not.

So, for anyone who's reading (mom, lol) this is why I'm not there today. Or tomorrow. And hopefully not ever again.

1 comments:

Ryan said...

Good for you Leslie.
I had a Facebook account way back in the fall of 2006 before Facebook was all the rage. I realized two things then. Like you, I realized how shallow and narcissistic the entire thing was. As well, I would get looking at one persons profile, see a familiar friend on their list and check out their profile and so on and so on until I realized two hours had elapsed.
"What a colossal waste of time" I thought to myself.
So after two short weeks in 2006 my Facebook experience was complete and I have never looked back.
Stay strong and good luck!

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